Kiwifruit Madness

After a completely botched bus journey, one that cost literally ten times as much as it was supposed to, Micah and I are in Tauranga, part of the Bay of Plenty. We arrived here, watched a terrible Warriors game, (they lost big time) and then met up with Mr. Zaky, or Alam, our boss. He is basically a crazy Bangladeshi guy, who Micah accurately summed up as "A combination of Kramer and Murray Hewett, with a dash of curry on top." Either way, he shows up at the tiny migrant house that we and two other Irish guys live in about three times a day after work. We are contract Kiwifruit pickers, which means that we pick Kiwifruits, and get paid by the bin. It is hard work, and the first couple days I woke up sore all over, trying to drown out the howling agony of my body with the screaming need for cash. We had to pick in T-bar orchards at first, which sucks, because they involve lots of bending and ducking with a large bag of fruit strapped to your chest. We should be working in Pergola orchards soon, which will be better, because the fruit is all overhead, and much easier to pick. Better money too. We each pick about 8 or 9 bins a day, which is about 5000-9000 pounds of fruit, not quite sure exactly which, but either way it's a shit load of fruit. All in all, it is a vast change of pace from the leisurely travelling we have mainly been doing so far, but it is nice to be working hard outdoors. New Zealand is very similar to America, only there are less people, and they are generally nicer. We are having a good time, though we have not yet begun our quest for the Ring. We'll find it though, and we'll let you all know when we do. Until then,

-Jack